Compassion for oneself

The issue of self-directed compassion has been coming up in a variety of ways lately -- in my reading [in Compassion: Conceptualisations, Research and Use in Psychotherapy and in Transcending Self-Interest: Psychological Explorations of the Quiet Ego]; in sermons at the mission; and in discussion at Loaves & Fishes.

As a longtime believer in ego reduction, I come at this with bias against being soothing toward oneself [or, as I term it, "the dastardly deed of giving yourself a pass for doing a bunch of stupid shit].

But studies this century on ego have changed the terminology and a sense of what the ego might be and what stable egos might be like. Now, perhaps, ego at its "best," is either quiet or silent, and that it might be good, for some, if not all, to direct compassion toward oneself.

Input from the mission

While matters of outwardly-directed love and compassion come up rarely at the mission [either in the milieu of Homeless World or in the preachers' sermons], they do come up in rather weird ways. One usually-hate-mongering preacher said something I've been mulling over: "God doesn't love you (and everyone else, equally) because of who YOU are, but because of who HE is." The line got hardy approval from the congregants. [Congregants DO hear of how they are much loved, but not about how they should themselves love.]

My immediate reaction was "What the hell!? If He doesn't love us for who WE are, individually, but wholly because He is who He is, then He must love us conceptually, and not for ourselves. And, truly, one can only love a being for his/her unique constituent of qualities; otherwise, it ain't love."

[But, then, God being God, knowing us from the inside, as the Christian preachers claim, He may ONLY be able to know us as particular persons and NOT as conceptions. He knows the numbers of hairs on the head of each of us, it says in the Bible (Matthew 10:30 & Luke 12:7.)]

Later thoughts of mine on the matter were even less damning: We can evoke love of others. We have that power. We can direct ourselves toward loving our enemies (as Jesus famously instructed), for example. At least we might if they are not so narcissistic that they are constantly game-playing. [I don't think a mentally healthy person can love someone whose authentic self is fully shielded. "There's no there there," as is said by psychiatrists about sociopaths.] Still, I insist loving the particular person is necessary for it to be love; people (as opposed to God) cannot love someone conceptially.

From what I understand, when Jesus said "love thy neighbor as thyself," one interpretation is that he meant "love they neighbor instead of thyself." For him to have meant "love thy neighbor in the same manner as one loves thyself" -- which is the usual interpretation -- presents curious problems. For one thing, we don't know ourself in the same way we know others. While we may think of ourself in the third-person, we never experience ourself in the third-person. Our relationship with ourself is radically different than the relationship we have with others. We can't bestow love to ourself in the same way we can to others; the two "loves" are wholly, radically, spectacularly different beasts.

It's a more than a little like comparing making love to masturbation. These are greatly different experiences because you can't be "the other" to yourself.

To my way of seeing things, compassion necessarily comprises an element of ignorance that we don't have about ourself. [While we are ignorant about things relating to ourself, when we are compassionate toward ourself, the same "ourself" that is bestowing the compassion is receiving the compassion, thus it is fully informed. Compassion we give to ourself is directly, overtly twisting what we immediately beforehand had seen as the truth.

Compassion toward another is given from a different viewpoint, different worldview and from a base of different data about the situation than what "the other" is going by. Compassion, because of its otherness, is enlarging. Compassion you direct at yourself is skewing and screwy and very much NOT a second opinion, from another perspective.

Beyond the self

In their paper "Beyond the Individualistic Self" by Drs. Korsgaard and Meglino in Transcending Self-Interest, the writers/researchers tell us that those who attempt to be both self-regarding and other-regarding end up with conflicted decisions and end up choosing self over other. Thus, only those who are "Other Oriented" benefit from full-throttle compassion.

		Other-Interest
		Low	High
Self-Interest	Low	Mindlessness Thanatos	Other Orientation Quiet Ego
	High	Rational Self-Interest Noisy Ego	Collective Rationality Phobos

In the chart at right, you can see the four types of egos that result from different combinations of high or low interest in self or others.

Mindlessness is a category that includes individuals who are low in both self-and other-interest. This mode of behavior is posited to involve functioning in obedience to commonsense rules. Behavior has been documented extensively in research on automaticity [Bargh & Chartrand: "The unbearable automaticity of being."] and mindlessness [Ellen Langer on Mindlessness, or, see her 1989 book Mindfulness].

Rational Self-Interest [High in self-interest; Low in other-interest] is egoism in its most-rigorous form (i.e., the "noisy" ego). Individuals pursue only self-serving goals. This type of reasoning underlies classical economics [unfettered capitalism!] and value expectancy models of attitudes and motivation [Ajzen: "Nature and operation of attitudes"].

Collective Rationality [High in both self- and other-interest] Individuals engage in rational judgment. While trying to maximize outcomes for both self and others, self-oriented goals triumph according to studies [That is, a self-serving bias wins out [Bazerman et al:. "Why good accountants do bad audits," in Harvard Business Review.] [Also, see DeDreu et al: "Motivated information processing, strategic choice, and the quality of negotiated agreement."]

Other Orientation [Low in self-interest; High in other-interest] Individuals are focused on benefitting others and apply principles or norms of behavior to meet these goals, obviating the need to consider personal consequences. [The "other" may involve a pair or group within which the self is subsumed.] This is the 'extreme' in quieting the ego. [See Meglino & Korsgaard "The Role of Other Orientation in Reactions to Job Characteristics" in the Journal of Management.]

But another view comes from Dr. Kristin Neff [in her Transcending Self-Interest paper "Self-Compassion: Moving Beyond the Pitfalls of a Separate Self-Concept" and from Dr. Paul Gilbert, editor of Compassion: Conceptualisations, Research and Use in Psychotherapy.

Writes Neff, "Self-compassion can be thought of as a type of openheartedness in which the boundaries between self and other are softened -- all human beings are worthy of compassion, the self included. In this way, self-compassion represents a quiet ego, because one's experience is not strongly filtered through the lens of a separate self."

I'm not sure I understand Neff, nor that she makes a good case for self-compassion, generally, but in case histories in Paul Gilbert's book I can see how some individuals are aided in overcoming trauma by soothing themselves with inward-directed compassion. For most of us, though, I have to think that loving ourselves is necessarily non-compassionate because of the self-other conflict that ensues.

At her website, Self Compassion, Dr. Neff writes, "When individuals feel self-pity, they become immersed in their own problems and forget that others have similar problems. They ignore their interconnections with others, and instead feel that they are the only ones in the world who are suffering. Self-pity tends to emphasize egocentric feelings of separation from others and exaggerate the extent of personal suffering. Self-compassion, on the other hand, allows one to see the related experiences of self and other without these feelings of isolation and disconnection."

Well, maybe so. Certainly Dr. Neff has researched the matter extensively. But I cannot see that people applying what they want to be compassion toward themselves doesn't become, really, self pity. One's relationship with oneself is, necessarily, self-oriented so only self pity occurs when one feels sorry for his- or her-self. Feeling sorry for others is the 'road in' for having compassion for others. Feeling sorry for oneself always, it seems to me, becomes self pity.

Kinds of Empathy

In his words describing a quality he sought for the person he will select to replace retiring Judge Souter on the Supreme Court, President Obama cited "Empathy." While Obama was a senator, he questioned John Roberts, now our Chief Justice, and said, in the course of things, that 5% of cases a Supreme Court justice hears will center on the justice's heart.

Daniel Goleman, author of Ecological Intelligence, tells us, in a recent Huffington Post piece, that there are three types of empathy, [thanks to C4 for this link!] which are these:

• cognitive empathy, means that we can understand how the other person thinks; we see his point of view. This makes for good debaters, sales people and negotiators. On the other hand, people who have strengths in cognitive empathy alone can lack compassion - they get how you see it, but don’t care about you. Psychologists speak of the “Dark Triad” - narcissists, Machiavellians, and sociopaths, who can be slick with their arguments but have a heart of stone (think Dick Cheney).
• emotional empathy, refers to someone who feels within herself the emotions of the person she’s with. This creates a sense of rapport, and most probably entails the brain’s mirror neuron system, which activates our own circuits the emotions, movements and intentions we see in the other person. This lets us feel with the other person - but not necessarily feel for, the prerequisite for compassion.
• empathic concern, the third variety of empathy. Empathic concern means we not only understand how the person sees things and feels in the moment, but also want to help them if we sense the need. A study of empathic concern in seven-year-olds found that those who showed least concern when they saw their mother in distress were most likely to have a criminal record two decades later

Since it is important here, let me add something Goleman didn't provide:  a description of "compassion" (taken from wikipedia):

• Compassion is a human emotion prompted by the pain of others. More vigorous than empathy, the feeling commonly gives rise to an active desire to alleviate another's suffering. It is often, though not inevitably, the key component in what manifests in the social context as altruism. Compassion or karuna is at the transcendental and experiential heart of the Buddha's teachings. He was reputedly asked by his secretary, Ananda, "Would it be true to say that the cultivation of loving kindness and compassion is a part of our practice?" To which the Buddha replied, "No. It would not be true to say that the cultivation of loving kindness and compassion is part of our practice. It would be true to say that the cultivation of loving kindess and compassion is all of our practice."

Below, in a viddie, Daniel Goleman talks about empathy and what motivates it. He tells us of the importance not being rushed has in bringing to the fore our natural empathetic instincts. Of homelessness interest, at the end of the viddie, beginning at ~12:12, Goleman says this: ...Friday, at the end of the day, I was going down to the subway, it was rush hour, thousands of people were streaming down the stairs, when all of a sudden I noticed there was a man slumped to the side, shirtless, not moving, and people were just stepping over him, hundreds and hundreds of people. But because my urban trance had somehow been weakened I found myself stopping to find out what was wrong. The moment I stopped, half a dozen other people immediately stopped for the guy. And we found out he was Spanish, he didn't speak English, he had no money, he'd been wandering the streets for days, starving, and he'd fainted from hunger. Immediately, someone went to get orange juice, someone went to get a hotdog, someone brought a subway cop. This guy was back on his feet, immediately. All it took was a simple act of noticing. And so I'm optimistic.

Is life a roller-coaster ride?

I don't know what life is, but I do hope that quickly after death we will each find out.

An answer you can find in old movies [for example, "Heaven Can Wait" or "The Horn Blows at Midnight"] is that after life you are on a cloud, in a long line, waiting for Angel Gabriel to let you in the gate – or not.

Another possiblity is that you are deleted. There is less than nothing after life; you are as much not around as the memory you don't have of yourself before you were born.

It can be that you pass through the Bardo, a spooky old place, dream-like and filled with potential terrors, on your way to a next birth, as a human or some other sentient being on this or some other planet or somewhere or somehow in some other universe that you could never imagine. And it can be, that your reborn self comes tagged with lessons that you need to learn from all your prior lives, bringing you pains and pleasures that you deserve.

Many of us Buddhists pull out text from some sutra and say that Buddha told us not to speculate on those things be cannot know. And what might happen to us after death is just the kind of time-wasting speculation he was talking about. But Buddha also told us to use our own judgment of what we should think or do, and I think that considering the possibilities of what death might mean is a good use of a modest chunk of our life's time.

My hope is that we find out that a life is just a crazy old roller coaster ride.

At the end of life, you find yourself in a roller-coaster car, passing out of a dark tunnel. The track takes you up and down a few modest bumps, splashing through water, then your car is brought to a halt. You then remember before you were born when you embarked on the ride. And unless you had a remarkable life, in an instant you see how silly you were in life, misjudging what was important and what was unimportant.

Just as with roller coasters in amusement parks throughout the world, there is no lesson to be learned from a ride, and you disembark at the same place where you got on. Life, it turns out, is just a stunning experience, playing with that magical substance Ignorance. We are all of us, really, this single great Cosmic Self, frozen with absolute knowledge of everything and thus incapable of laughter, love, terror or hope. It is only through Ignorance that Cosmic Self can have adventures and experience the myriad feelings that Ignorance makes possible.

While life isn't a land of lessons, we do learn things about it: It turns out that chasing after money and status is not only life's biggest time waster, it is as destructive as living a life of crime. There is nothing that one can achieve by being well off financially and being respected by others. Indeed, by taking more than your share of earth's bounty and putting yourself above others, you add to the collective pool of misery. It is only from a deeply-felt compassion for others, and having modest possessions, that a life is profoundly satisfying.

But life is not a lesson. And whether we live as a seriel killer or an ego-free saint, there are no rewards nor punishments to receive or endure after life's end. There is only this: Certain knowledge about everything, and the opportunity to ride again.

Funny thing -- or, I should say, seriously, that it is not so funny a thing -- the Roller-coaster Theory does not pick up much religious support. I think the reason for this is that religions thrive when obedience to the religion is rewarded with prizes and benefits after death. The Twin Towers suicide terrorists each had twenty submissive virgins waiting for them after their murderous crashes. Good Christians have an eternity in Heaven. Well-behaved Hindus and Buddhists have karmic rewards, which might include a next life graced with prosperity, health, and attractive physical features. And, of course, for Buddhists there is Paranirvana, an absolute end to all suffering.

The Roller-coaster Theory comes then with marketting problems. The afterlife of the major religions promise a Parential [usually, Fatherly] Approval, and with it, happiness and security. So, there is a reason for us to be Good; our life has meaning. Be Good to make the Great Cosmic Dad proud.

In the Roller-coaster Theory, you are not still a child -- one of God's children -- you are a grown-up. And while dangers and terrors and random acts of violence are for the most part outside what you can control or influence, there is no one more in charge than you are. Your life can go wonderfully or horribly, despite your will, effort and talents; there is no guardian angel to guide or protect you. And so it is hard to feel that there is ultimately any meaning to being alive.

Why be good if there is no eventual reward? At the first level of understanding, it is because you can only really be good if there is no reward. At the second level of understanding – which trumps the first, obliterating it – we should be good for its own sake: Good for Goodness' sake. That's all. There's nothing else.

But what is Good? And what is Goodness' sake? There is no one outside yourself to tell you. As our heart/mind matures, the ideal of good becomes less treacly and rule-bound. We do the right thing outside the call of reasons for what feels like [and is] a growing abundance of wisdom and compassion.

Compassion, in Born to Be Good, #2

This is from the book Born to Be Good, in the chapter titled "Touch":

On the stage in Vancouver before [our Buddhist-Science panel], His Holiness the Dalai Lama entered stage left and proceeded to greet the four panelists with his customary bow and clasped hands. The sighs, tears, appreciative head nods, goose bumps, and embraces of the 2,500 people in the audience produced a crackling ether that filled the art deco auditorium. I was the last panelist for HHDL to approach. From eighteen inches away I came into contact with HHDL. Partially stooped in a bow, he made eye contact with me and clasped my hands. His eyebrows were raised. His eyes gleamed. His modest smile was poised near a laugh. Emerging out of the bow and clasped hands, he embraced my shoulders and shook them slightly with warm hands.

As he turned to the audience, I had a Darwinian spiritual experience. Goose bumps spread across my back like wind on water, staring at the base of my spine and rolling up to my scalp. A flush of humility moved up my face from my cheeks to my forehead and dissipated near the crown of my head. Tears welled up, along with a smile. I recalled a saying of HHDL's:

At the most fundamental level our nature is compassionate, and that cooperation, not conflict, lies at the heart of the basic principles that govern our human existence.

For several weeks after I lived in a new realm. My suitcase was missing at the carousel following the plane flight home -- not a problem. I didn't need those clothes anyway. Squabbles between my two daughters about the ownership of a Polly Pocket or about whose back-bending walkover best matched the platonic ideal -- no bristling reaction on my part, just an inclination to step into the fray and to lay out a softer discourse and sense of common ground. The frustrated person behind me in the line in the bank, groaning in exasperation -- no reciprocal frustration, no self-righteous sense of how to comport oneself in more dignified fashion in public; instead, an appreciation of what deeper causes might have produced such apparent malaise. The poeple I saw, the undergrads in my classroom, parents at my daughters' school, preschool teachers walking little groups of three-year-olds in hand holding chains around the streets of Berkeley, those parallel parking their cars, recyclers picking up cans and bottles, the homeless shaking their heads and cursing the skies, people in business suits reading the morning paper waiting for a carpool ride, all seemed guided by remarkably good intentions.

Compassion, in Born to Be Good, #1

This from Dasher Keltner's new book Born to Be Good, in the chapter titled "Compassion":

When Richie Davidson scanned the brain of a Tibetan monk, he found it to be off the charts in term of its resting activation in the left frontal lobes. This region of the brain supports compassion-related action, feeling, and ideation. After years of devotion and discipline, his was a different brain, humming with compassion-related neural communication.

Okay, you're rightfully critiquing, whose resting brain state wouldn't shift to the left if you had the time and steadfastness to meditate for four to five hours a day upon lovingkindness, as Tibetan Buddhists do? Fair enough. When Richie and Jon Kabat-Zim and colleagues had software engineers train in the techniques of minfulness meditation -- an accepting awareness of the mind, lovingkindness toward others -- six weeks later these individuals showed increased activation in the left frontal lobes. They also showed enhanced immune function. They may not have been donning the saffron robes of the monk, but at least their minds were moving in that kind direction.

Recent scientific studies are identifying the kinds of environments that cultivate compassion. This moral emotion is cultivated in environments where parents are responsive, and play, and touch their children. So does an empathic style that prompts the child to reason about harm. So do chores, as well as the presence of grandparents. Making compassion a motif in dinnertime converstions and bedtime stories cultivates this all-important emotion. Even visually presented concepts like "hug" and "love" at speeds so fast participants couldn't report what they had seen increase compassion and generosity.

Compassion is that powerful an idea. It is a strong emotion, attuned to those in need. it is a progenitor of courageous acts. It is wired into our nervous systems and encoded in our genes. It is good for your children, your health, and, recent studies suggest, it is vital to your marriage. In the words of the Dalai Lama: "If you want to be happy, practice compassion; if you want others to be happy, pratice compassion."

~C4Chaos's Kind of Kick-Ass Dharma Teacher

	~C4Chaos meditating in an exotic spot in Washington state.

I love ~C4Chaos because he jumps into life with extreme passion and extreme compassion. And since he is also extremely brilliant, extremely productive and extremely exuberant [as well as being a hyperWilberian], all the lights in the room I'm in double their brightness when his webpages glow on my monitor.

In his latest blogblast, "The Science of Enlightenment is Paving the Way for the Enlightenment of Science," C4 sings the praises of "The Science of Enlightenment" a 14-disc CD package written by Shinzen Young.

Shinzen Young is a Vipassana meditation teacher, but also a lot else, having emersed himself in Buddhism diciplines other than Theravada, including Shingon and Zen. We also learn from wikipedia, that he has extensively studied and practiced Lakota Sioux Shamanism. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL, FOLKS ... he also is a geeky science-interested fellow, "integrating meditation with scientific paradigms." It says that Shinzen "frequently uses concepts from mathematics as a metaphor to illustrate the abstract concepts of meditation." Hmmm. I'd surely be interested in THAT leap; math to meditation. The calculus of deep non-thought.

	Shinzen Young, as pictured at his webspace Meditation in Action.

Anyway, between C4's post and Shinzen Young's main webspace, Meditation in Action, there is lots to be found about the idea of the integration of science and meditation, of the synergy of the Post-modern Age and True Enlightenment. C4 and Shinzen believe, as I must, that only a major uptick in our leaders' thinking and actions [and, thus, necessarily, in the general population, as well] will we be able to thread our way through the dangers and challenges that the testy future holds for us all. And, thus, "tread our way to liberation" using an alloy of ancient and modern wisdom.

Writes C4 in his post,

Shinzen Young's is one the most-sane voices paving the way for the enlightenment of science. Since the publication of The Science of Enlightenment ten years ago [Yep, TSoE was originally issued as a bunch of cassettes 10+ years ago, but was reissued and modestly updated in CD format in 2005.] , there already are promising signs that the cross-fertilization of Western science and Eastern meditative technology have been gathering momentum. One of the leading voices in the field is B. Alan Wallace (a Buddhist practitioner and scientist). See Wallace’s talk at Google: “Towards the First Revolution in the Mind Sciences.” On the more mainstream end, Sam Harris (a neuroscience researcher) is making noises about such integration. See Harris’s essays on the Huffington Post: “A Contemplative Science” and Shambhala Sun: “Killing the Buddha.”

Let me end things by kiping a poem, written by Shinzen, that is currently on the homepage of Meditation in Action. I have to say that the poem is controversial, even to me. Can the Path be so all-encompassing? But, mustn't it be!?:

The Path

If anybody asks you what the Path is about,
It's about generosity.
It's about morality.
It's about concentration.
It's about gaining insight through focused self-observation.
It's about the cultivation of subjective states of compassion
   and love based on insight.
And it's about translating that compassion and love into
   actions in the real world.

UPDATE: In C4's prior post, he has a couple Shinzen viddies and a link to a three-part audio talk with Shinzen at Buddhist Geeks, and MORE.

Homeless Lit: Cannery Row

	Cover of the first edition of John Steinbeck's 1945 novel.

This is the first in a series looking at how homelessness is presented in literature. Does fiction present homeless folk realistically? Are we romanticised? Are we presented as scummier, less-wholesome beings than the good people most of us are? Are the homeless people of yore different from what we're like today?

--

"a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream"
-- A description of the street Cannery Row,
from the first sentence in the book.

Cannery Row is the story of many poor and interesting people who live on Cannery Row, a street next to the Pacific Ocean, where many sardine-canning factories stood, in Monterey, California.
A character called Doc is usually identified as the main character in the story, but, truly, the plot of the story results from the many actions of "Mack and the boys," a group of men who are homeless at the beginning of the book, and whom the omnipotent third-person narrator tracks most closely for the whole of the story.
As I say, Mack and the boys are homeless at the beginning, but in Chapter I, they gain possession of a Cannery Row building, thereafter refered to as the Palace Flophouse, where they take up residence without need of paying rent. A solid mass of text describing Mack and the boys concludes Chapter II [emphases, mine]:

Mack and the boys [spin] in their orbits. They are the Virtues, the Graces, the Beauties of the hurried mangled craziness of Monterey and the cosmic Monterey where men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everything lovable about them. Mack and the boys are the Beauties, the Virtues, the Graces. In the world ruled by tigers with ulcers, rutted by strictured bulls, scavenged by blind jackals, Mack and the boys dine delicately with the tigers, fondle the frantic heifers, and wrap up the crumbs to feed the sea gulls of Cannery Row. What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums. Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.

There's lots of interesting stuff in this paragraph.

First, Steinbeck [as an omnipotent, crotchety third-person narrator] calls Mack and the boys [Mack, Hazel, Eddie, Hughie and Jones] "the Beauties, the Virtues, the Graces." He is refering to the Charities of antiquity. Quoting wikipedia, "In Greek mythology, a Charis (Χάρις) is one of several Charites (Χάριτες; Greek: 'Graces'), goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility. They ordinarily numbered three: Aglaea ('Beauty'), Euphrosyne ('Mirth'), and Thalia ('Good Cheer'). In Roman mythology they were known as the Gratiae, the 'Graces.'"
Certainly, the five homeless men friends are very admirable in many ways, as are the biggest subset of the homeless in Sacramento. They are clearly, basically good-hearted and well-meaning and mostly oblivious to their own self-interestedness and destructiveness.
An early tangential story, within the greater story of Mack & boys' efforts to throw a big party for good old Doc, has a lonely watchman, named William, trying to make friends with the five homeless guys. For no particular reason, the homeless guys reject William, and after some other insensitive encounters, William plunges an ice pick into his heart. "It was amazing how easily it went in. William was the watchman before Alfred came. Everybody liked Alfred."
From an unsourced commentary, found online, some wisdom about the 'tragedy within merryment' which repeats in Steinbeck's sad novella:

The symbolism of chaos-and-order is basic to Cannery Row; various characters, each in his own fashion, try to arrange and observe what cannot, in any essential aspect, be changed. As Steinbeck says in one of his "inter-chapters" or digressions, it is the function of The World - of human communication - to create by means of faith and art an Order of love which is mankind's only answer to that fate which all men, and indeed all life, must ultimately share. And if John Steinbeck turns to the "outcasts" from society as symbols for this vision, it may be that only the outcasts of machine civilization can still remember who they truly are.

Once again, even in this most charming of books, Steinbeck recapitulates the themes
so integral to his work: the need of the human animal to organize, to combine for purposes beyond that of the mere individual appetite; the corruption and poison of moral pomposity and insane acquisition; and the loneliness-within-brotherhood of all flesh and mortality.

In Zen terms, the novella hones in on the idea of interbeing [A state of connectedness and interdependence of all phenomena], or, similarly but perhaps better, circuminsessional interpenetration. We all both deflate and delight each other, usually without much awareness of our powers of destruction and our ability to bring joy. We are also oblivious to the realization that each other is all we have and that the one thing we don't have is ourself. [We stupidly, endlessly defend the illusion of ego.]
In the quote from Chap II, Steinbeck writes about "fear and hunger," which is, again, the paired cheribim of "fear and desire" [in the garden of Eden] which destroy us and hold us back, and is what we must overcome to save us. In the rescue mission in Sacramento, fear and desire ["you risk going to hell" and "jesus would love to see you in heaven"] are used to rescue homeless men from the fear and desire ['destitution/meaninglessness/drudgery of the homeless condition' and 'alcohol! drugs! immediate relief!'] outside the rescue-mission property gates. [I would say that instead of swapping one's fear-and-desire for some other set of fear-and-desire, life's purpose is to overcome fear-and-desire, altogether, and -- as with most things that suppress us -- we overcome them by examining them closely and finding them not to be so special or to be a real threat.]
In the novella, Mack and the boys cause a lot of trouble while, mostly, having good intentions. In the wake of their parties and clever adventures, other people's lives are damaged. But, Doc, the book's great good supposedly-responsible character, too, is rather-unintentionally the cause of destruction. A character in the shadows, a retarded lad named Frankie ["Frankie drifted about like a small cloud."], hangs out at Doc's lab. Because he loves Doc, he steals a clock as a present for him. As a result of the theft, Frankie is hauled away to a life in an institution with Doc being rather oblivious to it all.
Late in the book, Doc makes some observations about Mack and the boys to a friend with whom he is drinking some beer and listening to classical music:

Doc said "...Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen. I think they survive in this particular world better than other people. In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed. All of our so-called successful men are sick men, with bad stomachs, and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy and curiously clean. They can do what they want. They can satisfy their appetites without calling them something else."
and a little later ...
"It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."
"Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?" said [Doc's friend].
"Oh, it isn't a matter of hunger. It's something quite different. The sale of souls to gain the whole world is completely voluntary and almost unanimous -- but not quite. Everywhere in the world there are Mack and the boys. I've seen them in an ice-cream seller in Mexico and in an Aleut in Alaska. You know how they tried to give me a party and something went wrong? But they wanted to give me a party. That was their impulse."

Certainly, Mack and the boys are romanticised and overly admired by the narrator and main character, Doc, compared to the harsh glare of reality. But there is an element of truth to all that the narrator & Doc [that is, Steinbeck] is saying. From being alienated to the madness of a regular back-stabbing life, the bums of Cannery Row and the acclimated-homeless people of Sacramento enjoy a certain availability to wisdom and openness and genuineness that is -- damn it -- admirable.

Whatever Happened to "Love Thy Neighbor?"

One thing that is mostly missing from Union Gospel sermons, and is intermittent in what a homeless person experiences staying in the mission dorm, is the ideal of brotherly love or ‘love thy neighbor.’ And, indeed, in the sermons, there is far, far more hate talk about earthly society than mention of anything in the vicinity of lovingkindness.

This bugs me. Most of the homeless guys I know have a lot of problems, including addictions, unemployment and a hardscrabble life getting anything done, due to the time-devouring way all the homeless-service providers in our world are organized. Getting kindness and endeavoring, ourselves, to be kind is a rather obvious need.

Christianity didn't used to be stinting with kindness and talk about kindness. Writes Elaine Pagels early on in her book Beyond Belief:

Jesus … said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” What God requires is that human beings love one another and offer help – even, or especially, to the neediest.” [Mark 12:29-31]

Such convictions became the practical basis of a radical new social structure, Rodney Stark suggests [in his book The Rise of Christianity, pg 86-87] that we read the following passage from Matthew’s gospel “as if for the very first time,” in order to feel the power of this new morality as Jesus’ early followers and their pagan neighbors must have felt it:

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me…. Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me. [Matthew 25:35-49]

These precepts could hardly have been universally practiced, yet Tertullian [in his book The Apology] says that members of what he calls the “peculiar Christian society” practiced them often enough to attract public notice: “What marks us in the eyes of our enemies is our practice of lovingkindness: ‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love one another!’”

Recently, on consecutive nights, Brett Ingalls of Vacaville Bible Church and Jimmy Roughton of Capitol Free Will Baptist Church gave tremendous, inspiring sermons that had a lot to say about goodness, the near cousin of "love thy neighbor." Hooray, them.

Brett Ingalls used the whole of his time to talk on the topic of "forgiveness." He had a lot to say that was fascinating and he anchored what he said to Scripture. Christians should endeavor not to be angry with each other, but when one is aggrieved, he should discuss what is wrong in a kindly way with the other who has hurt or harmed him. A Christian who transgresses against another should prepare himself to apologize, humbly and genuinely. And, how ever much someone has hurt or harmed us, we must forgive, fully.

There was a second part to this -- a "vertical" aspect -- where Christians humbly and genuinely seek forgiveness from God, when appropriate.

I wish I had an audio or transcript of what all Pastor Brett said, or had taken notes. From the gist of what I remember and will retain, I see the elements of outstanding guidelines for best behavior.

Jimmy Roughton, the next night, was in top form, speaking passionately and pacing back and forth in front of the altar like a caged jungle cat. His sermon was on the idea that Christians needed to be wonderful examples to others both for themselves, to live as manifestations of their dear faith, and so that nonbelievers will see them as beacons of the transforming power of belief in Jesus.

While many of the Union Gospel preachers make becoming a Christian sound like a burdensome, horrible chore, Reverend Roughton spoke of it as something that is in all ways wonderful and joyous and burden lifting. Roughton ended his surmon with one of his varietions on Pascal's Wager, saying that he would rather be wrong with all he believed about God and Jesus, and suffer no penalty, than be a nonbeliever and be wrong -- and, thus, be hellbound. Roughton is the only mission preacher who uses Pascal's Wager (though never identifying his argument as such). By the reaction of the guys in the seats, "the wager" seems motivating to many. It doesn't work on me; I feel I'm stuck believing whatever seems to be true.

While I think Ingalls's and Roughton's sermons were excellent and effective, I await a sermon that is very directly about lovingkindness, addressed to the tough rescue-mission crowd. Such a sermon might talk about how the guys should think about their behavior being too selfish or me-centered.

Today, getting a bed at the mission requires aggressiveness with some pushing and shoving at the sign-up window, outside. Lining up for dinner is competative, with many guys using sneaky means to move up in the serving line. A lot of guys have a need to maximize the space they have at the dining table; they put their arms on the table at either side of their tray.

A lot of the selfish nonesence is understandable. There are benefits that accrue from being selfish in Homeless World Sacramento. For people who don't have much, having a little extra by way of being aggressive is meaningful.

At Loaves & Fishes, there are tussles to get better or earlier services than others: There's a 7am race to get early men's showers and low lunch-ticket numbers. We live in a race to the bottom; because so many are extremely self interested, others of us have to act in self interested ways to get something close to 'our share.'

Homeless World Sacramento is full of mostly-wonderful people [truly, truly], but the tough time-devouring circumstances in which we live makes ungenerous and suspicious people out of us. Teach us to be kind, O Preachers.

Born to be Good

A new book that I haven't seen yet and my library doesn't have yet has gotten my attention due to two reviews I read.

The book, Born to be Kind, has Confusian, rather than Buddhist, roots, but I like the idea behind it: That the best way to describe human origins is not survival of the fittest, but survival of the kindest. [I can't say that "kindness" sounds more likely to be true, but I'm hopeful.]

The author, Dacher Keltner, is on tour, promoting his book now. Below, a YouTubed statement by the writer about why he wrote his book.



Here's the review in the Jan-Feb, 2009, issue of Psychology Today:

Through his studies on facial movements, tones of voice, goosebumps, dinosaurs, and beauty, Berkeley psychologyist Keltner has forged what he calls a "new science of positive emotion." His conclusion: Human beings have evolved a set of positive emotions -- gratitude, mirth, awe and compassion -- and it is these that enable us to lead meaningful lives. The key to happiness, he says, is to let these emotions arise in ourselves and to evoke them in others. Human beings are wired to be good -- so much so, Keltner says, that the best way to describve our origins is not "survival of the fittest" but "survival of the kindest."

The second review I read was in Library Journal. Couldn't find it at their website, but did find it at Barnes & Noble.

UPDATE 1/27/09: Bill Harryman has a post on "Born to Be Good" over at Integral Options Cafe. Word of this book is spreading, and its POV is causing discussion.

UPDATE 3/3/09: There is a GREAT comprehensive review of Keltner's book in Slate, reviewed by the great Howard Gardner: "How Good Are We, Really?" At its end, the review is not altogether an endorsement of Keltner's book, since Keltner doesn't prove what he sets out to. But the book does entrigue Gardner, and me, because of what it does and can say about goodness in human beings.

Update 3/21/09: I've added two quotes from Keltner's book, related to compassion: Compassion in Born to Be Good, #1; and Compassion in Born to Be Good, #2.

Tom's First Sermon at Union Gospel Mission

[This is what my talk would be, if the Union Gospel Mission would allow, me, an unordained Buddhist, to give a sermon there. But, ahh, it's, um, not likely that I'll be allowed ... I would guess.]

I want to talk tonight about the fictional children’s story set in the Garden of Eden found in Genesis 1, 2 & 3. It’s a wonderful tale, even better than "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," but like "Goldilocks...," it never truly happened.

It’s an especially swell tale, that Eden thing, though. It’s the OBVIOUS story that a tremendously-insightful ancient person would invent to explain the beginnings of human life.

Think about it: God is Perfect, All-Knowing; Has nothing; Needs nothing. Then, just for kicks, he divides the universe in half.

Before the first day, he creates time, separating it from stillness.
On the first day, he separates darkness and light.
On the second day, he separates heaven and earth. … and so on.

God, ONE UNIFIED PERFECTION, WHICH IS CONTENT FREE, is dividing, like a growing human cell, dividing and multiplying and, in a process of evolution, coming to life. For, what else can he do? Perfection has no counterpart. So, he creates a counterpart by cutting Himself in half an endless number of times.

In the Garden of Eden, which is the opposite of the chaos of the life on earth that God created in the first seven days, He divides Himself from Himself, creating a companion, his image, Adam. And later, to give a companion to Adam – so that Adam can be that much more like God – cuts a piece out of the first man, giving him a woman.

And then, rather slyly, He creates that which is forbidden, separating it from that which is fully available: The Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil and The Tree of Immortality are forbidden, separate from all of the other vegetation which Adam and Eve may eat. [So now, it seems, that Adam and Eve are made less like God, to whom nothing is forbidden.]

Now, it’s a curious thing. Adam and Eve only know about the The Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil, and not about the The Tree of Immortality. [I’ll get back to that later.]

Because it is human nature – or, truly, the nature of all life – to be especially, keenly interested in whatever is forbidden, Adam and Eve end up eating the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, just as God had wanted them to. For now, they are even that much more like God. They are exploring; going beyond themselves, exercising their free will. [For how else, other than by thinking about what you're not supposed to do, can anyone exercise free will?]

God, now, kicks Adam and Eve out of Eden – making them, then, EVEN MORE like God. Remember, God had kicked himself out of “Perfect Oneness which is Content Free.” Now, God is kicking Adam and Eve out of the BORING AS HELL Garden of Eden, where you are not confronted by challenges.

Now, Adam and Eve have left their so-called idyllic spot. Just like us, Adam and Eve have been left to fend for themselves on the dangerous – and sometimes cold and wet – pathways of earth.

Now, we are told, God installs the cherubim and a flaming sword at the gate of Eden to keep Adam and Eve out, lest they eat of the Tree of Immortality. [BTW, be aware that this information seems to tell us that Adam and Eve were never immortal up to this point.]

The cherubim and the flaming sword. What do they represent? Cherubim is plural for cherub. So, here another duality. What are the TWO cherubs? [A cherub is defined as “Usually represented as a pudgy, blond haired child that has wings sprouting from his/her back.”] So, what do the TWO cherubs represent?
- - - -

Let us pause here for a moment.

The story, I hope you all are coming to understand, IS METAPHORIC!!! It is not to be taken as a concrete happening, as conservative, painfully-literalist Christians are inclined to take things.

Why MUST there be a fictional story in the Bible? [A book already full of parables (i.e. fictional stories), I might add.] Because it is only through metaphor that psychological issues can be addressed. Religion is about spiritual matters, not dead rocks. There are some things we cannot tell each other about: specifically, those experiences that happen within the lonely space of our minds. We cannot comprehensively communicate our suffering and gladness. Language is a blunt, crude, wholly-inadequate instrument. Thus, until [referencing 1 Corinthians 13] we meet face to face, and see through the glass clearly] we need metaphor.
- - - -

Now, what do the two cherubs with the flaming sword represent? Fear and desire.

Fear and desire are the two things that bar us from the Tree of Immortality. Fear and desire are the two prime things in human nature that make us unlike God. If we can overcome our fear (primarily of death, but of other things, too) and desire (for the fun, alluring and diverting things to be found on earth), then we would easily pass through the gate and return to Eden.

How do I know that the cherubs represent fear and desire? Because it is the message of overcoming for enlightenment, which is the twin of being born again. But also because that superior religion, Buddhism, TELLS US SO! [See “Mysticism and beyond: Buddhist phenomenology, part II”]

Buddhism, too, has its famous gate. It’s called the “gateless gate,” since, in reality, there is nothing barring one from passing through it, EXCEPT those ephemeral twins, FEAR and DESIRE. In the Buddhism theme, one of the guards has his mouth open and the other his mouth closed. But it truth there is nothing to stop you from entering the gate. Indeed, the whole point of your life is for you to pass through the gateless gate.

Many Buddhists, famously, sit in meditation. What does meditation accomplish? It stills the mind. What is the benefit of stilling the mind? It is a return to The One, to the Timeless Now, before God subdivided himself into all things on heaven and earth.
- - - -

Now, remember, in the Garden of Eden story, God has gone from THE ONE to THE MANY. At first God was ONE, then he became THE MANY. The Roman philosopher Plotinus tells us that our life has this path: Flee the Many, find the One; having found the One, embrace the Many as the One. This path, too, is the ground of The Perennial Philosophy. [You can read some about Plotinus relating to Homeless World Sacramento in a prior post to this blog: "Phobos and Thanatos"]
- - - -

So, here we are. You and me and Adam and Eve and everybody, possibly including the squirrel in the tree. We are outside of Eden, fending for ourselves in a dangerous world where there is strife, suffering and incredible injustice. Of course, we imagine a perfect world – a land of bliss. It must be somewhere. Metaphorically, it involves a return to Eden – a return to THE ONE.
- - - -

Now, about those trees. INSIDE the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were forbidden the fruit of ONE tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. OUTSIDE the Garden of Eden, there are TWO forbidden trees, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil AND the Tree of Immortality. Don’t you see!? THE TWO TREES, inside the Garden, ARE ONE AND THE SAME TREE!!! [Inside Eden, before God divided Himself, the trees are one. Outside Eden, in our world of duality, the single tree is seen as two.]

The Garden of Eden tale is telling us that THE WAY BACK INTO THE GARDEN IS THE SAME WAY OUT. But first you must overcome fear and desire. And then, you may eat, again, of the fruit of the tree! MORE knowledge is the return to THE ONE. MORE knowledge is the route to immortality. And what is this knowledge? It is the knowledge of Good and Evil. And what comprises knowledge of Good and Evil? Wisdom and Compassion. [BTW: It is NOT that wisdom and compassion ARE good and evil; they are THE KNOWLEDGE of Good and Evil.] Once you fully have wisdom and compassion, wisdom & compassion become ONE thing [the TWO become One]: Agape – unalloyed, unconditional, unbounded love.

Once you are ONE, again [like Adam briefly was], YOU WILL KNOW GOD [and knowing God is, of course, the knowledge of good and evil] and once you know God, you will love everyone unconditionally, as he does, thus EMBRACING THE MANY AS THE ONE. And THAT is the whole point of your life, dear friends [I think]. The Buddha said at enlightenment, "I am one with all things."
- - - -

So, the Garden represents Heaven. But when you embrace the many, you leave heaven and return to the earth with all its messiness. The Kingdom of Heaven, you see, is here. The Kingdom of Heaven is within. The Kingdom is on earth as it is in heaven. Hallowed be thy name.

Here is something I believe, that I've posted before -- though my believing it or not doesn't make any difference. What I believe is that consciousness is all One Thing and that we are all in the Game of Life, a "cosmic game of checkers," together. Here, then, a snippet from a Ken Wilber interview known as "A Ticket to Athens" which explains things:

Spirit is not good versus evil, or pleasure versus pain, or light versus dark, or life versus death, or whole versus part, or holistic versus analytic. Spirit is the great Player that gives rise to all those opposites equally -- “I the Lord make the Light to fall on the good and the bad alike; I the Lord do all these things” -- and the mystics the world over agree. Spirit is not the good half of the opposites, but the ground of all the opposites, and our “salvation,” as it were, is not to find the good half of the dualism but to find the Source of both halves of the dualism, for that is what we are in truth. We are both sides in the great Game of Life, because we -- you and I, in the deepest recesses of our very Self -- have created both of these opposites in order to have a grand game of cosmic checkers.

- - -

Note: This post is an embellishment of some of Joseph Campbell's ideas in his book "Thou Art That." To Joe: A tip of the hat. My source material is found on ~pg 49-52 which can be seen via Google Books.

Compassion is like wild flowers and not like veal farming

I know this sounds somewhat like me, contrarian that I am known to be: It seems I have come out in opposition to Compassion.

Seems that many of the blogs I follow have posted about an idea that Karen Armstrong [no relation to me] has that a Charter For Compassion be developed.

In an On Faith post called "Calling All Religions to Compassion," Armstrong writes:

The major task of our generation is to build a global community where people of all persuasions can live together in mutual respect. If we do not achieve this, we will not have a viable world to hand on to our children. We must implement the Golden Rule globally, treating other peoples ~ whoever they may be ~ as we would wish to be treated ourselves. Any ideology ~ religious or secular ~ that breeds hatred or disdain will fail the test of our time. The religions should be making a major contribution to this essential task ~ and that is why it is important to sign on to the Charter of Compassion, change the conversation, and make it cool to be compassionate.

We hope that hundreds of thousands of people ~ Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Confucians and atheists all over the world will contribute their insights on line on our multi-lingual website. The world will help to write this Charter to return religion to the spirit of the Golden Rule. Can we make a difference? "Yes We Can!"

The reverend Danny Fisher [of eponymous blog fame] is tentative about the idea. While he is pro-Compassion [surprised?], he is on the fence re the charter idea, being drawn to some negatory ideas he shares with Sharon Jacoby: 1) there is already a Universal Declaration of Human Rights that covers the same ground, and 2) while all major religions believe in something close to the same thing as this compassion thing, not all read it the same way.

In a long, thoughtful post, About.com's Barbara of Barbara's Buddhism Blog takes stern issue with Jacoby's objections. She writes: "Jacoby's reaction amounts to a knee-jerk recitation of all of her resentments about religion, whether they relate to what Armstrong said or not. Judging by the title of her comment -- 'On The Unreliability of Compassion Without Enforceable Law' -- she equates 'compassion' with 'good behavior,' which is not how I understand compassion. Compassion that must be enforced is not compassion." Barbara seems to like the charter idea, though she doesn't quite say so explicitly.

Rod, the whinny behind "...worst horse," alerts us to the charter thing, but expresses no view.

Bill of Integral Options Cafe writes, "I'm late coming to this, but The Charter for Compassion is a great idea that I think deserves more attention ..." ["More attention," I think it's starting to get.]

Me, I have some discomfort with the effort, beyond just Armstrong's goofy try to snag some of that Obama mojo. "Yes We Can!," indeed.

I hate to see "compassion" become something we hit people over the head with: "Be compassionate, damn it, you vulgarians, you."

Or see a Dogma of Compassion develop. To get compassion you must meet our regulations for compassion.

And what about the slippery slope!? Sure, a bunch of fat-hearted people want compassion universalized now -- but what next!? Love? Kindness? No meat eating? A reversal of California's Prop. 8!? Rush Limbaugh taken off the radio? Universal health care? Storming the Winter Palace?

Nah. Compassion is like wildflowers and not like veal farming. We must allow it to sprout where it will.

As for Barbara's objection to Sharon's objections: IMHO, if we "charterize" compassion, then it becomes a code, a rule, a command. It morphs into a regulation mandating behavior: Compassion made remorseless -- that is, incompassionate.